


Crimson

by aldiara



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blood Magic, Dark, Everyone Has Issues, F/F, Magical Tattoos, Mildly Dubious Consent, Pre-Half-Blood Prince, Self-Harm, Sexual Violence, Teenage Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-11
Updated: 2004-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:20:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s fifteen years old and knows about the inherent human affinity to fall. She knows that everyone can be corrupted, even those who believe themselves corrupt already. Only purity has limitations; taint is infinite.</p><p>(Messed-up Ginny is messed up.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crimson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alshaworld](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alshaworld/gifts).



> Very old (and largely unbeta'd, I'm afraid) fic that I'm adding here by request. There's also a smidge of Harry/Draco but it's not a main focus so I can't really justify adding them as a tag.

In the end, of course, Dean Thomas won’t do.

Ginny doesn’t really know how to break it to him, because Dean is one of those guys who’ll want to know why. It’s not that she doesn’t know why. It’s just that it sounds a little… crazy.

It’s because Dean got her roses for her birthday – a dozen, as deep a red as the lipstick she’s taken to using, the one that clashes with her hair in a way that she finds appealing. The roses have a deep, luminous sheen of their own, and when Ginny smells them, glitter rises from their tight buds to settle on her skin and lashes. _Glitter_. It takes forever to scrub off, too. Ginny fakes happy surprise convincingly enough for Dean to beam and kiss her, but she dumps the roses in the rubbish bin that same afternoon and covers them with crumpled bits of paper so no one will find them.

It’s because Dean takes her for walks and shyly holds her hand. His is sweaty and warm and makes Ginny feel itchy and awkward. When they run into his friends together, he greets them with a fake air of smug casualness ( _“Look at ME, I’m taking a WALK with my GIRLFRIEND!”_ ) that makes her want to slap him.

It’s because he buys her candy when they go on Hogsmeade trips; it’s because his idea of naughty is to grope her clumsily behind the Herbology shed and to rotate his tongue around the inside of her mouth; it’s because he strokes her hair and tells her that her eyes are beautiful.

All that wouldn’t be crazy, of course. Her mother would be the first to say that she just hasn’t found the right boy yet (and if she were in a particularly annoying mood, might add that maybe Ginny should look closer to home and wink, which of course means Harry.) No, the crazy thing is that she’s also breaking up with Dean because he smiles at her a lot; because he laughs at her dry jokes and hugs her spontaneously, muttering “You’re great, Gin” into her hair. Because he pays attention to what she says and because he tries not to fuck up too much, and because he really, really likes her.

Ginny has found that she doesn’t deal well with being liked.

She finally breaks it to Dean after an evening stroll by the lake (he pointed out stars to her with great seriousness, as if she might be so taken with his knowledge about celestial phenomena that she won’t notice his fondling her breast). _It’s not you_ , she says, _it’s me_. He stutters and gulps and looks at her as if he was the first guy ever to fall for that line, but eventually he pulls himself together and magicks up a wry smile and says he wishes her the best, and can they still be friends? Of course they can, she says, and of course that’s the last time they talk.

She hooks up with Ernie MacMillan for a short while, not for any particular reason, just because he asks; but that goes even worse than Dean, and they break up over Christmas. Ernie goes on to date Hannah Abbot after, which is probably the best for everyone involved.

As for Ginny, she dates and dumps, in quick succession, Neville Longbottom (people seem to expect it, and he’s nice enough, really), Nathan Ludlow (Hufflepuff, cute but boring, likes to read Kafka to her), Mark O’Connor (wouldn’t know what to do with a girl if one punched him on the nose, which Ginny does after he smacks her on the arse by way of hello) and, in a fit of spontaneous madness, Colin Creevey (no need to elaborate, is there).

 

None of them lasts longer than a month, and Ginny knows that she is getting a reputation of sorts. Ron has begun to shoot her worried glances, and during exam time, he takes her aside and asks, slightly exasperatedly, just what the hell she thinks she is doing. Ginny tells him to mind his own business and just because he isn’t getting any (he has finally managed to ask Hermione out, but Ginny can tell from the way they’re holding hands that that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon) doesn’t mean she can’t. Ron blushes bright red and stomps off in a huff, but not before telling her to watch it, she is turning into a right hussy. Ginny stares after his retreating back (he has grown so tall!) and suppresses a wild fit of laughter. _Hussy?_

Colin is the only one who doesn’t take the break-up well. He pleads with her and frantically demands to know why, what can he do, why is she doing this to them? Ginny, eager to get away from him, answers him crossly, and Colin starts to cry.

“Why are you doing this?” he bleats, staring at her with wet, naked eyes. “What is _wrong_ with you?”, and that’s when he comes closer to the truth than any of them, even Ron.

Of course. There’s something wrong with her. There has to be, no? It couldn’t be anything else. She’s a Weasley, for crying out loud. They are known for being funny sidekicks and promoters of nurturing family values all wrapped up in self-knitted sweaters and thatches of red hair. Weasleys are poor but loyal, simple and friendly and entertaining. There’s no room in there for the kind of things Ginny thinks of in the darkness of her narrow bed after hours. They are so healthy it makes her gag.

Summer break is coming up. Luna is going to Greenland with her father, in some mysterious hunt for icegroffs. Pansy Parkinson loudly talks about her planned trip to Finland over at the Slytherin table. Ginny would kill to get away for the summer. As if sensing her murderous glare, Pansy looks over and smiles, a mean, sideways smile, then tosses her dark bob and returns to her doomed attempts to ensnare Malfoy’s attention.

Malfoy isn’t even looking at her. He’s looking at Harry with an expression that can’t quite decide whether it wants to be “fuck off” or “fuck me”. Ginny inwardly rolls her eyes. She’s seen that one coming for two years.

Harry, of course, looks uncomfortable and loudly asks Ginny about her summer plans. She shrugs. “Buried at the Burrow, I guess.”

He looks wistful, and she wonders when he’ll finally get over that Little Boy Lost syndrome. Probably the day that Umbridge turns into a turtledove, hell freezes over, and Snape shags Kreacher. “That sounds great,” Harry says.

Ginny shrugs. She’d swap with him any day, but he doesn’t want to hear that. He doesn’t want to know that she feels a twitch of genuine interest at the thought of being locked in a cupboard under the stairs, possibly without clothes on. Being cold and hungry and completely abandoned. At night fat Dudley will come by and force open her thighs, grunting, and she’ll cry. There’ll be tears and blood and come, and no one watching but the spiders.

Harry watches her with mild concern. “You okay, Gin?” he asks, and she forces herself to smile.

“Yeah. Smashing. Have a great summer, Harry.”

He snorts. “Thanks. You too.”

She goes home with Ron, staring out the window of the Hogwarts Express. At what point does one start to wonder whether they are deranged?

It’s an all but empty house this summer. Fred and George are busy in London with _Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes_ , and only come home every other weekend, in a flurry of bizarre joke items and half-sentences finished for each other. Bill’s somewhere in Tibet, Percy is “where the sun never shines”, according to Fred and George, and their father has gone to visit Charlie in Romania, deciding in a spur-of-the-moment decision of supreme unfairness to allow Ron to come along.

So for now it’s only Ginny and her mother, and they both feel strange, almost awkward without the usual amount of loud, cheerful males around. Molly doesn’t seem to realise that time is passing; years of it, and that they’re flying fast. She still tries to teach Ginny how to make pastries and handle cleaning spells; she looks at her clothes critically and says that she is too thin, she has to eat more, and just what on earth is wrong with jeans that actually go above your hipbones. She tries to talk Ginny into curling her hair, she tells her that she’s wearing too much make-up.

“And you’re so tall, dear, you don’t need those awful high heels. They make you look like a trollop,” she chides. Ginny ignores her, ignores the curlers and the chore list and the proposed shopping trips, “just us girls, what do you say”. Instead, she stays in her room and draws images of flames and strange creatures with fangs.

She takes up a habit of swearing. “Fucking” is the word of the week – everything is “fucking boring” or “fucking moronic” or “fucking 8am on a weekend”. Molly is scandalized, but Ginny doesn’t really give a toss. At night, she lies awake and fantasizes about Death Eaters, about graveyards and men with cowls, and herself lying, naked and tied down, on an altar. They stand around her in a circle, and then they advance, slowly and menacingly. Lying in her bed, Ginny runs her hands idly over her breasts. Her fingers are cold and her nipples harden immediately. She skims them lightly, then squeezes. Hard. Behind closed eyelids, she sees dark cowls thrown back, dark robes opening, to reveal men with dark smiles. Hands on her, touching, fondling, squeezing. She pinches her nipples so hard that the pain forms tears in the corners of her eyes, running hotly down her cheeks. They touch her all over. There is no place too private, no boundaries between pain and pleasure. They pull her legs apart roughly, then tie her ankles to opposite corners of the altar, spread-eagling her.

So fucking predictable.

She’s angry without knowing why. One day, when she has a slice of cake in her room, she idly grabs the knife that came with it and drags it across the inside of her underarm in a sudden slash. A long, thin line of red blood wells up, then oozes slowly down her arm. She drops the knife, a little frightened by herself, a little shocked. She can hear _What is WRONG with you?!_ in her mother’s voice, in Ron’s, in Colin’s. Harry doesn’t know how lucky he is to have no family that smothers him with caring, twists his arms with love. Ginny wraps her arm in a bandage and wears long-sleeved shirts for a little while, until the slash has transformed into a hairline scar. She doesn’t touch the knife again, not for fear of the blood, or the pain; for fear of how she might like it too much. As the summer goes by, the scar turns white and pretty. A mystery scar, something that could come from anywhere. It could be from a struggle. It could be a scar of heritage, of fame, like Harry’s.

(Who the fuck are you kidding, she thinks).

Her mother is confused, then worried, then angry at her lack of response, her changed ways. When she finds Ginny smoking behind the empty garage one afternoon, all hell breaks loose. Molly scolds and shouts like a banshee. Ginny waits it out with a face of stone. She knows her mother hates that most. Molly covers her room in smoke-detecting spells, puts hexes on her clothes to squeal shrilly when they’re exposed to cigarette smoke. So juvenile. Ginny gets through them with a relatively simple spell they learned in DADA and becomes more cautious about when and where she smokes.

Things get a little easier when Dad and Ron come back and the twins come to visit. Once again, the house is loud and cheerful and ringing with male voices and Ginny gently slips to the bottom of everyone’s attention. Once, that made her sad. Now, she’s glad of it.

Her mother tells her father about what she probably dubs “that little problem with Ginny”, but she knows she has nothing to fear from that corner. Her dad knocks on her door one evening and kindly offers to “talk”, asks her if anything’s wrong, if she knows that she can always come to him. Tells her that he understands she is growing up, but to take it easy on her mother – she has always had younger children to tide her over the partial loss of the grown ones, she’s always had Ginny, her little girl, and it will hit her hard to lose her too. Ginny nods and even finds a smile for him somewhere, but she’s glad when he leaves. She understands better than he thinks. It doesn’t mean that she can dredge up much sympathy for her mother.

When school starts again, Ginny suspects she’s not the only one who is relieved. Her mother hugs her fiercely on the platform, clinging as if it was for the last time. Ginny pats her back, half annoyed, half pitying, and realises with a start that she’s a head taller than Molly.

Except for the constant subtle atmosphere of impending doom, school’s the same old. Ginny is busy smoking, avoiding homework and building up her reputation. Ron almost has a heart attack when she starts to date Zacharias Smith. It is only due to Harry and Hermione’s intervention that he doesn’t lock her up in Gryffindor Tower, and he doesn’t talk to her for two weeks. In fact, Ginny catches worried glances from a lot of Gryffindors these days. A few times she even gets asked whether she shouldn’t be careful about her company, because Zach is friendly with a lot of Slytherins, and she wouldn’t want to be associated with _that_ lot, now would she. Ginny silently rolls her eyes and wishes she could tell them to fuck off and mind their own business. Shouldn’t they be listening to the Sorting Hat and unify against the enemy or something like that? That’s all she’s doing, really. She’s promoting good inter-house relations.

Zach is alright. He lasts longer than the others. He’s got a slightly mean sense of humour and he doesn’t fuss over her all the time or give her cute teddy bears for no reason. He knows how to kiss and he takes her to Slytherin parties a few times, where she doesn’t stand out as much as she thought she would. Nobody comments on her make-up or her heels; nobody cares how many drinks she has, or how many fags. Pansy Parkinson even comes over one time from where she was clinging to Malfoy’s arm and asks if she can mooch a smoke, she’s out. Ginny hands her one and lights it for her, and Pansy raises her brows at her lazily.

“Moving up in the world, aren’t we, Weasley?” she says, with a glance at Zach, who’s across the room talking to Goyle. “I thought you were still fawning over Potter.”

Ginny shrugs. “Can’t live up to the competition,” she replies, and nods over Pansy’s head towards where Malfoy is standing surrounded by his cronies. “I’m curious, Parkinson, does he call you Potter when you do it?”

Pansy, who’s been dating Malfoy for less than a month, goes an unflattering shade of red. “You bitch.”

Ginny smiles. She’s faced Tom Riddle when she was eleven; she’s written on a wall in blood. She’s not afraid of pug-faced Pansy Parkinson and her little jabs. “No, really,” she says sweetly. “I admire your open-mindedness. I’m sure that when he finally gets into Harry’s pants, he’ll let you watch. You’ll make a great fag hag.”

Pansy looks just this side of slapping her, but then a nasty smile curves her lips. “You keep talking, Weasley,” she snarls. “At least I _am_ doing it.”

Ginny blows smoke in her face and watches her retreat with a contemptuous smile, but the comment gets her thinking. Pansy’s right about that much. It’s time to see what the hell all the fuss is about.

They do it on the next Hogsmeade weekend, in a dingy room above the Hog’s Head bar. Zach does her the courtesy of not strewing rose petals on the sagging mattress, not catching his breath and telling her how beautiful she is. They came here to fuck. Virginity is a temporary annoyance and the yielding of it overrated.

All things considered, it’s okay. She doesn’t come, but she didn’t expect to. Zach is happy. He holds her and tells her she’ll like it better next time. There’s more blood than she expected. She waits until Zach goes to the bathroom to scoop some of it into a flask, to use for a spell she’s found in a book from the Restricted Section.

It all becomes a little routine after that, and Ginny knows that Zacharias Smith has just about reached the end of his uses. Thank god he thinks the same way. They stay together for another three weeks, just long enough for Ginny to get the hang of going down on him, and learn enough to fake an orgasm, then they break up amicably. Gryffindor Tower, and Ron especially, breathe a sigh of relief, and Ginny stays single for long enough to study the spell she found so intriguing. She spends long nights in the Gryffindor common room, grinding dried herbs and mixing them with the sample of her virgin’s blood, muttering, _“Virgo attractis”_ over and over again over the thickening substance, until it is perfectly blended and crimson, with a deep, luscious sheen that draws the eye. Carefully, Ginny applies the mixture as a lipstick every morning. The results don’t take long to come in. Glances follow her in the hallway; boys stumble over nothing when she is near. Invitations come fluttering in: for Hogsmeade weekends, for a school dance, for strolls by the lake. At breakfast, the owls flutter to her table, bearing small parcels of chocolates and notes of admiration. Under Ron’s dark scowl of disapproval, Ginny goes out with a flurry of boys, for no more than one date each. She does it with three of them and finds out that they’re all more or less incompetent; one keeps his socks on, one pokes about hopelessly for the mysterious entrance he seems to think is located somewhere near her appendix, until Ginny disgustedly takes matters into her own hands; the third one, a seventh-year who she thought might know better, sprays all over her stomach and then calls her a manipulative slut.

After each date, safe within the thick curtains of her four-poster bed, Ginny pulls out the knife that she keeps underneath her mattress and draws it across her upper arm, idly watching the blood trickle down. There are quite a few cuts there now, in various stages of healing; one for each of them, for each clumsy, fumbling, sweet or annoying, clueless, useless boy. She doesn’t do it as an honour to them, or to remember them. It’s merely a way of controlling when to give in to the subtle tug of wanting this – the sharpness of pain, the slender trail of crimson.

After a few more similar encounters, Ginny stows away the _Virgo attractis_ lipstick, tired of boys and their lack of finesse. Her mother has sent several stern letters full of “Ron told me” and “inappropriate conduct” and “be careful, Ginny”. Ginny throws them out. She doesn’t need to be told to be careful. She knows her contraceptive spells, which is more than could be said for her mother; otherwise, how could she have ended up where she is, a middle-aged witch with nothing to show for her life than seven brats and a house sagging at every corner?

She wants more than that. She doesn’t know what, but in the quiet moments of some nights, when she can’t sleep, she remembers the boy Tom; remembers how his spirit touched her and brushed her own self aside without effort… that bright flame of ambition, the spark of wanting. Everyone wants things. There is nothing inherently bad in wanting. Voldemort is a monster, for sure, but everyone has choices. Ginny remembers waking up in a pool of blood in first year, remembers Harry’s exhausted face as he told her she was safe, and remembers the brief flash of mourning, not for Harry, who thought he would die, but for Tom, that brilliant flash of sharp mind and ruthlessly focused _want_ , gone. It was so simple, being subsumed in someone else’s wants. In a way that she didn’t understand at eleven, it was liberating. It’s so much harder figuring out what she wants herself.

Out of boredom, and because what little sexual daring there is to be found must needs lie with Slytherin, she fools around with Blaise Zabini for a couple weeks. He’s a pouf, of course, but says he wants to experiment, which suits Ginny. He has an astounding array of toys, which spice things up for a bit. After they’ve got the basics down – yes, we can get it up for a girl, that’s an advantage – they proceed to more advanced stuff. He lends her his nipple clamps. They hurt worse than expected, but she is pleased with the needle sharpness of pain, the dull ache for days after, when every touch and slide against her shirt brings it back. Blaise gives her step-by-step instructions to improve her blowjobs, and Ginny reciprocates with tips regarding female anatomy (“do you want me to circle it with a red pen or what? Oh fine, just give me your hand.”) He calls her on faking, and they laugh about it – she likes that, he’s the first she can laugh about sex with. They use his dildos, which seem to have much more effect on him than her – there’s the one time when he screams as he comes, and Ginny has a brief but strong feeling of prostate envy. But when the toys run out, so does their interest, and they part ways. Blaise says it’s because they’re both bottoms. Ginny suspects it isn’t nearly that simple but agrees for good terms’ sake. “Take care, slut”, Blaise says amicably as he hugs her goodbye. “If only you had a cock.”

“I’ve got enough problems”, Ginny replies dryly.

Christmas is drawing near. Ginny causes a new row with Ron when she tells him she won’t be going home this year. She doesn’t tell him why, because there’s no way to tell Ron, dear, simple Ron, that she’s sick of being safe, that the thought of Christmas at The Burrow, with every decoration singing carols and candy-filled socks dancing on the banisters and her mother’s warm, ginger-smelling arms around her, makes her want to gag. She simply shrugs and says she doesn’t feel like it; she wants to know what Christmas at Hogwarts is like. Ron splutters and shakes his head and calls her a nutcase. Her parents send sad and confused letters, to which she replies briefly and politely. She suspects it is only because, as it turns out, Harry is staying at Hogwarts as well, that they all eventually relent. _Harry will take care of Ginny_ , is the unspoken consensus that Ginny can read between their sulky lines of agreement. _Harry will look after her_. It fills her with a mixture of annoyance and guilt, because she knows Harry might otherwise have chosen to come with them and celebrate Christmas at The Burrow, which he would love. But there’s nothing she can do. Harry has destined himself to be a rescuer, whether rescue is wanted or not.

Her brief period as Most Wanted Girl in School has ended with the stowing away of the _Virgo attractis_ , which is fine with Ginny. While it was amusing, it also made her feel uncomfortable. If she doesn’t deal well with being liked, being sought after is worse. She stays alone for a while, and contents herself with the familiar sharp pleasure of her fingers, and with watching others have the relationships that she can’t cope with. Ron and Hermione are still holding hands in corridors, and her brother is still wearing a huge idiot grin on his face whenever his girlfriend is around. Not unlike the grin that Dean used to wear when she was with him, Ginny remembers, and wonders idly what it would be like to be like Ron - to be content with that sort of warm familiarity, with smiles and sweaty palms and chaste kisses in deserted hallways.

Dean is dating Parvati these days. They seem happy, which makes Ginny glad. He deserves someone whom he can make happy. Ernie MacMillan is still with Hannah Abbot, in similar complacency as Ron and Hermione. Colin is with Lavender Brown, of all people, happily puppy-wagging at her heels and fetching at her command, an arrangement that seems to suit them both.

As ever, relationships in Slytherin are of a less permanent and less traditional nature. Zach is in an openly strictly fuck-buddy based arrangement with a girl named Raven Andersen. Malfoy and Parkinson have recently broken up – surprise, surprise – but are still often seen in conversation, dark and silver heads close together in appealing contrast. Ginny has always thought that the Slytherins have the right attitude about breaking up. What’s the point in blubbering if you can just get on perfectly decently with one another?

Pansy notices her watching and glares at her over Malfoy’s head, but Malfoy doesn’t see; Malfoy is staring down at his tightly clasped hands with an expression of furious concentration mixed with something just this side of fear.

He is so pretty, Malfoy. All that sleek, silvery hair, bones likes china and alabaster skin, and all that nasty reputation. Briefly, Ginny considers… but no, she’s had enough of dating for the nonce, and besides, she doesn’t fancy being poisoned by Parkinson. Not to mention the glances Malfoy still shoots at Harry, hateful and wanting and filling Ginny with an odd sort of sympathy when she sees them – not because she knows what it feels like to lust after Harry, but because if there’s a person who’s more messed-up than she, it must be Draco Malfoy.

But at least he knows what he wants, even if he hates wanting it.

She is unexpectedly displaced from her observer’s viewpoint when one afternoon in the week before Christmas, while she is doing homework in the library, she is approached by Harry, who appears to have attempted to plaster his hair down with three bottles of hair gel, which gives him the endearing appearance of a wet hedgehog. He makes small talk for two minutes, shuffles his feet, picks at his fingers and then, when Ginny impatiently asks him what’s up, goes very red and finally, staring determinedly at a spot on the wall above her head, asks if she’d like to go out with him some time.

Her first impulse is to laugh; her second, to find Ron and slap him until his ears are redder than his hair. Because it’s pretty bleeding obvious what’s going on, isn’t it? She asks Harry, who denies it, but turns even redder.

“It’s okay”, she says. “I know Ron put you up to it.”

He squirms and tries to deny it, but eventually he sees it’s fruitless and confesses, with a palpable sense of relief that even a year ago, Ginny would have found insulting, even a little hurtful. Now, she is amused. She opens her mouth to tell him he can tell Ron where to stuff it, but at the last moment, she reconsiders and, on a sudden mad impulse, says, “Sure, let’s go on a date.”

Harry stares at her like she’s suddenly gone mad, and Ginny laughs. “Just so Ron will shut it”, she says. “Trust me, your virtue is safe with me.”

He stares at her, scandalized and, well, a little mortified. Dear Harry. Seventeen, at the heart of intrigues for most of his life, and he is still clear as crystal to anyone who really cares to look.

The date, unexpectedly, is fun. Harry has snuck a Portkey from somewhere that takes them to Diagon Alley, which is so over-decorated that it hurts the eye, and bustling with Christmas activity. They see a play about Wendelin the Weird, eat candy-glazed apples and roasted chestnuts and drink so much punch that they get tipsy. Harry buys her a scarlet shawl at one of the stands.

For an evening of jingling, snowy, jostling, carol-filled pre-Christmas madness, Ginny considers this – this life she dreamed of when she was younger, star-struck by a pair of green eyes and a boy’s heroic legend. She could still be this; could relent and willingly flow in the direction that her family has gently been nudging her for so long. She could just wilt, and Harry would be there to catch her, not for love, perhaps, but duty and affection can be stronger ties than love. _Harry and Ginevra Potter. The Potters_. They would be sweet and devoted and inspiring warm lurches of happiness in _Daily Prophet_ readers who would say, _Oh, he deserves it_. They would be heart-warmingly, wonderfully, retch-inspiringly happy.

Instead, she has seven scars upon her upper left arm, seven secret scars to his one famous one, and knows the way that Malfoy has been staring at him for two years. The balance isn’t in her favour, and besides, she knows that it won’t work. They both have been touched by Voldemort’s madness, but it has never brought them closer together. Harry must one day kill him, or die himself, and either way, Ginny knows she will feel a void, as well. A part of her still bears the memory of a boy named Tom Riddle, a beautiful, intense boy with his eyes dark flames of want, and she doesn’t know what will happen when that part is gone. Perhaps it will sever something in her that she needs to live; perhaps she will float away on a wash of crimson, too. Perhaps the girl that walks and talks and plays with boys as though she knew what she is doing is nothing other than a shell; perhaps the real Ginny never woke up from that pool of blood.

Harry asks her what she’s thinking of, she’s suddenly so serious. They’re walking through the streets of Diagon Alley, their evening almost over. Ginny stops, and looks at him. He’s taller than her now, never as tall as Ron, but tall enough. His hair has defiantly shaken its coatings of hair gel and is sticking up every which way, as usual; it catches snowflakes like sugar drops. His face is serious and more guarded than it used to be; she’s not the only one who’s changed. These are dark years. His eyes are more cautious and shutter easily; but at the moment they’re concerned and open, still so green, still the eyes of a boy she used to love, when she was too young to love.

Ginny smiles, and rises on her tiptoes. “Thank you, Harry,” she whispers, and kisses him lightly on the lips. He seems to understand, for he doesn’t kiss her back, just looks back at her with a half-smile that mirrors her own faint fondness, faint regret.

They return to Hogwarts in silence, and that night, Ginny cuts a new line into her stomach, a thin line shaped like a lightning bolt, and she doesn’t care how stupid that is. It hurts like hell, much worse than the cuts on her arm, and the blood runs slow and thick down her quivering stomach, wending into her pubic hair in tickling little streams, clashing with the soft copper curls.

She never ends up staying at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays. Lavender Brown is organizing a skiing week in her parents’ skiing lodge in France, and she invites most of the girls in Gryffindor, and some in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. No one from Slytherin, but that goes without saying. That poor silly Hat is fighting a lost battle, Ginny thinks, but she accepts Lavender’s invitation with relief. Lavender’s parents have not allowed her to invite boys, which grieves most of the girls going no end, but Ginny couldn’t care less.

The lodge is small and cosy, smelling of pinesap and crackling fires. They ski and have snowball fights and ride in an open carriage through a wintry fairytale landscape, but it’s the evenings for which most of the girls are really in it, the evenings of giggles and whispered secrets and shrieks and drinking games and daring tales of sexual bravado, most of which Ginny knows to be lies. They try to pull her into it at first, try to encourage her to share, but Ginny refuses, faking shyness. They would not understand, these girls in their cotton pyjamas, with their wide-eyed accounts of tongues in their mouths and hands on their bottoms. They would not understand the taste of come or the odd sense of invasion, the lines of seven straight scars and one lightning-shaped. They think themselves daring for pressing up against an erection – how could they understand the secret desire to be tied, the feel of steel clamping upon your nipples, deep-buried dreams of force and teeth and always, always blood, the need to want?

So she remains silent, but she watches them – flushed cheeks, bitten lips, lush mouths and nipples pressed hard against that innocent pyjama cotton, unwittingly aroused by their chaste tales. And sitting quietly on the side, one hand upon the still-healing scar upon her stomach, she understands what the next step must be, why boys are not enough for her to want.

And for the next few days, she considers them. Parvati and Padma are breathtaking, with their glossy black hair, flashing eyes, that dusky skin. Lavender is what Ginny supposes is called _cute_ : blonde ringlets, dimples, pretty breasts. Hannah is plain-faced, but her body’s nice. She notes subtler things, as well, how long their fingers are, how aesthetically pleasing the curve where neck and shoulders meet, how much more gracefully they move. At night, alone with the bleak comfort of her fingers, she imagines breasts against her own, an absence of that thrusting, swollen appendage, and feels that yes, she could do this. She pushes down hard and imagines it is someone else who strains and tenses and shudders, clenching around her hand, and feels a tingle of excitement even as she comes, the longed-for tingle of wanting. Yes, she could do this.

But on the heels of this comes the realisation that these girls, so close to her with their heaving breasts and flushed cheeks and sleekly tossed hair, might as well be in a cloister in Tibet, as far as she’s concerned. Their daring secrets just barely revolve around things they’d be shocked to know the boys consider cock-teasing; making a move on one of them would get her into Saint Mungo’s faster than in any girl’s panties.

It’s pretty obvious, Ginny surmises, that it will have to be a Slytherin. They’re much more sensible about such things. Perhaps Blaise can fix her up with someone… although, no. Blaise is a gossip, and the last thing she needs is more of her escapades leaking through to her maddeningly protective brother.

She comes back to school to discover it buzzing with gossip. Apparently Malfoy stayed at Hogwarts over Christmas as well, which is a first for him. There are rumours that he and Harry got into an awful fight, probably about Malfoy’s father. That sort of thing is old news, so Ginny couldn’t care less about Malfoy’s bruised cheekbone and Harry’s dark glare from a blackened eye. At dinner, though, she sees the dark marks on Harry’s neck as well, the ones that look suspiciously like bite marks, and she sees Malfoy’s swollen lips. She sees the way they are determinedly not looking at each other, the way Harry’s ears are permanently red and the way Malfoy is not quite smirking into his stew. She lets the others gossip, and she smiles, a secret smile that she quickly slips sideways into her long curtain of hair. But when she looks up again, she finds Pansy Parkinson’s dark eyes watching her, with a long, hard look devoid of her usual nasty glint, and instead fraught with a grim sort acknowledgement and just a hint of grudging calculation.

Just for a second, Ginny lets that secret smile slip back into a corner of her mouth. Do you see now, she asks Pansy with her eyes, but Pansy doesn’t reply, just looks back at her with that shrewd, black look, and it’s Ginny who sees, then; sees that it’s obvious, really. Pansy fucking Parkinson. Of course.

She continues to watch, but now there is a focus, someone who could be a means to her end, and as she watches, she wonders if this is at all like what Tom Riddle felt as he watched her through the pages of that enchanted book, knowing all, seeing the plan, while she blindly stumbled about in the web.

Pansy isn’t gorgeous like Padma and Parvati or pretty like Lavender, and she doesn’t simper and flounce and giggle. Her features are too square to be conventionally pretty, and that short snub nose still gives her an unfortunate similarity to a pug from certain angles. But there is no doubt that she’s interesting, and Ginny has long been bored with convention. Pansy’s hair is sleek and black, cut in a straight-lined bob that shows off her long neck, the fringe meeting her thick eyebrows and framing her face in a severe, but not unappealing way. She uses eyeliner dramatically, which suits her, and prefers black even when she’s not in school robes. She wears tight shirts and black jeans that shouldn’t look good on her, because her bottom is too big for them. But she walks like she doesn’t care, which makes it work. She swings that too-large bottom through the school corridors in those too-tight pants and flashes around dark glares from those over-made-up eyes, and Ginny thinks, _Yes, this could work_. She doubts that Pansy would flutter and gasp and run away. She’s a Slytherin, after all. They are practical.

It doesn’t take all that much plotting, really. Malfoy’s birthday is coming up, and she knows that the Slytherins always throw him a party. She makes sure to talk to Zach and Blaise a few times after class – it’s so useful to be friends after you’ve broken up! –, she makes sure to be friendly and accessible. In a stroke of simple but effective brilliancy, she pays Crabbe a compliment about his new haircut. He smiles at her in his dull, oxen way and in the next Double Potions class – he’s finally been set back a year and now hulks once again in fifth grade, still giving wrong answers and botching papers – he makes sure to sit near her. Ginny smiles at him with just the tiniest sheen of _Virgo attractis_ on her lips, and at the end of the class she has an invitation to come to Malfoy’s birthday party, with the password written on a bit of parchment in Crabbe’s nearly illegible scrawl. Boys are so easy.

Just as luck will have it, Ron catches her out as she walks through the Gryffindor common room on her way to Malfoy’s party. When she calmly answers Ron’s demand where she’s going with the truth, he flips completely. He yells at her, asking if she’s lost her mind, that she’s mad if she thinks he’ll let her walk into the Slytherin’s den dressed and made up like a whore. It’s been more than enough, the way she’s behaved, he says. He’s her only brother remaining at Hogwarts, he says, it’s his duty to watch out for her, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let her ruin herself more than she already has. Blah blah blah. _Dear Ron_ , she almost says, but bites it back, because she knows that’ll only make him explode some more. Instead, she waits it out. The common room has grown quiet. Students are staring. Some are quietly making their way towards the bedrooms, not wanting to witness their row. When Ron pauses to take a breath, Ginny turns for the door. He grabs her and spins her around so fast she almost stumbles in her high heels.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going!” he demands angrily.

“Oh, sorry”, Ginny says calmly. “I thought you were done.” His eyes almost bulge, and for a moment she wonders if he will slap her. That would be a new one.

He doesn’t, though, and she smiles at him. “Come on, Ron”, she says soothingly, as though to a child. “You don’t seriously think I will do what you say?”

He stares at her, completely dumbfounded. His gaze slowly travels up and down her body, as if he’d never seen her before now. Ginny stands calmly and lets him watch. She knows she’s beautiful tonight, as beautiful as she will get. Her hair has grown almost to her waist; it hangs thick and straight and red, catching the light, clashing with the deep red of her dress, which is just tight enough to be promising, just loose enough to be enticing. Her freckles are spilling out from her chest, across her bare shoulders and arms. Once she hated them, tried to spell them away and blanch them with milk; but she does not mind them now. She has had boys try to count them, chase them with kisses, and knows that there is power in the unusual. She’s wearing no make-up except the thinnest layer of _Virgo attractis_ – the last of it, but that does not bother her: with luck, it’s the last night she’ll need it. She sees Ron staring at it, his expression deeply puzzled, and she can read him so clearly just then… she knows that she need but rise to her toes and lift those glossy lips to his, and he would be hers, even he, even in front of the ones still watching (one of them is Colin, she can feel his resentment and secret excitement leaking across the room). She wonders whether he is as freckled as she – it’s been a while since she saw – wonders what kind of scar that would take. A deep one, she thinks. A very deep one.

But then the sudden thickness of tension in the room is broken by someone asking what’s going on, and when they both turn, there is Harry, wearing a green shirt that brings out the colour of his eyes, and looking rather caught out himself. He’s carrying a small something that his hands aren’t quite large enough to conceal, wrapped in silver paper.

Ron stares at him. “And where are you off to?” he asks suspiciously. Harry blushes and mumbles something about _uh, ah, erm, well, ahm, Malfoy’s party_ , and Ginny doesn’t know whether to laugh at her brother’s expression or give him a hug; he looks so sorely in need of one.

The rest is just her standing there and watching Ron and Harry have it out, and there’s never really any doubt as to which of the two will win an argument. It ends with Ron storming off in a huff and Harry frowning after him, that line of annoyed stubbornness mixed with concern between his brows that Ginny has seen so many times. The boy she doesn’t want anymore is the only boy she feels she really knows. Ironies.

She touches his arm, ignoring the whispers and looks around the room. “Let’s go, Harry”, she says. They walk down to the dungeons in silence. Ginny knows better than to ask him questions, but it feels good for a change to know that he isn’t coming along to keep an eye on her.

Slytherin common room greets them with a blast of music and a lot of stares, most of them for Harry, but Ginny feels a number of them resting on herself as well, and she tosses her hair and smiles as if she enjoyed the attention, and saunters into the room. Blaise flutters up to her and kisses the air next to her ear, telling her that she looks _fab_ and dragging her off to get a drink. She’s greeted by some of Zach’s friends, makes meaningless small talk. Zach himself is dancing with a girl she doesn’t know, but he waves at her when he spots her and gives her an approving look over.

Across the room, she can see Malfoy and Harry standing close together; Malfoy is holding the silver-wrapped package that Harry brought. He is shaking it and saying something, one eyebrow raised in his familiar smirk, and Harry looks torn between annoyance and embarrassment. Since Blaise is chatting away with someone beside her, Ginny is free to watch them for a few moments, watch the way that Malfoy cocks his head and almost smiles, the way that Harry doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Malfoy makes as if to open the package, but is stopped by Harry’s fingers on top of his, a blush, a murmur. Malfoy laughs, but sets the parcel aside. It’s odd to watch, as though she were seeing a play that she has read years ago but never seen on stage.

Her view is suddenly blocked by Crabbe, who tells her that he likes her dress and mulishly insists on lighting a cigarette for her, and for the next half hour, she struggles with the impossibility of having a conversation with him. He stares at her lips and stands so close that she can smell him, aftershave mixed with sweat. He asks if she wants to go for a walk. Ginny smiles and declines, which makes him glower.

Blaise rescues her with another drink and with someone that she _has_ to meet, and after that, it all becomes a little blurry. She talks to a great number of people and has near to no idea about what. At one point, she comments on the music, which seems to be coming from small green and silver spheres that are floating around the room near the walls and ceilings, and a pimple-faced third year tells her they’re called _cantabulantas_ and that Pansy had them imported from Italy.

And there is Pansy herself, on a sofa across the room, drinking and smoking with a small group of seventh-year boys. She’s wearing a simple black shirt, long-sleeved, but rather tight and – Ginny blinks – oh my, leather trousers. They cling to her hips and thighs in a way that should be illegal. She wears a simple black choker and too much make-up as usual. She holds a cigarette between her fingers and wears an expression of studied boredom, but when she looks up, as though she felt Ginny’s eyes on her, the look changes to one of shrewd alertness that Ginny likes – she likes being able to put someone on their guard like that. She smiles, very deliberately, and slightly raises her glass in Pansy’s direction before she drinks. Pansy frowns, then makes a barely perceptible motion with her hand that flicks ash on the pants of her closest admirer. Ginny smiles into her drink.

As the evening carries on, inhibitions loosen. There is more music, more dancing, and a lot more drinking. Ginny gets asked to dance a lot, but she declines. She flirts a lot, laughs too loudly and drinks too much, but she has found that she can hold her liquor pretty well. Being drunk always seems to give the world an extra sharp edge for her instead of blur it. She notes that she hasn’t seen either Malfoy or Harry anywhere in a while, notes that Crabbe is trying to follow her, and makes sure to change location often enough and keep an eye on him so he won’t catch a hold of her. She also notes that Pansy is still on her sofa and that, between bored-looking conversations, between cigarettes and drinks, from underneath her immaculate fringe, Pansy is watching her.

She feels triumphant, she feels beautiful. She tosses her hair a lot, does little twirly pirouettes and knows that she could have any boy in the room. She is just heading for the table with the drinks, glass raised high over her head as she wends her way through the gyrating and grinding dancers in the middle of the room, when she feels something brush the top of her head. Looking up, she sees that it’s one of the _cantabulantas_ , a silver one. It gently bumps against her hand, then travels the inside of her raised arm, down to her shoulder, where it swirls around her head to the other arm, brushing and nudging. The music emerging from it is a deep humming that is almost drowned out in the rhythmic chanting and drumming of the other magic spheres, but it vibrates against Ginny’s skin gently where it touches her.

Momentarily enchanted, Ginny spins softly with the little globe, following its swaying motions; then it darts away to rejoin the others, and when Ginny looks up, she finds Pansy still watching her with that calculating gaze. With a very deliberate motion, Ginny sets her glass down underneath a chair and approaches the sofa. She feels the seventh-years’ eyes on her as she draws near, noticed two of them preparing to get up, but she doesn’t look at any of them.

“Fancy a dance?” she says to Pansy, who stares up at her with brows disappearing into her fringe, mascara and kohl not thick enough to mask the surprise in her eyes.

“What?”

Ginny smiles. “You heard me”, she says, aware that they are being watched, that Crabbe is still glowering at her from across the room, and finding it disproportionately amusing. She extends a hand towards Pansy, feeling powerful, and not because of the _Virgo attractis_ , which has almost worn off anyway. She knows that she holds all the cards; she knows that Pansy doesn’t know the rules to this game, but she will play anyway. Because Slytherins never turn down a chance to win.

Pansy’s eyes flicker past her, and without turning, Ginny knows that she’s looking for Malfoy. “Come on”, she says softly. “You know them. There’s nothing they find hotter than the thought of two girls.” She curls one corner of her mouth into a smile. “Two _hot_ girls.”

She has Pansy then, and she knows it. An answering glint sparks in the other girl’s eyes, and for a moment, she looks more than compelling; she looks wicked, dazzling, like Ginny knows she herself does. She lets her smile widen as Pansy takes her hand, allows her to pull her to her feet.

The music has beat, but it’s slow at the same time, it’s deep, with a pulsing bass and drums that Ginny can feel in her temples, travelling through her veins, pooling deeply between her legs like the secret of coming blood. It’s just slow enough to be the kind that allows skin contact, and Ginny takes advantage. She slips forward, into the space between Pansy’s arms. Her dress slides against Pansy’s leather trousers with a soft whispering noise, and she puts a hand on Pansy’s shoulder. Neither of them seems to lead, which Ginny likes. They simply spin slowly, and Ginny imagines she can travel the pulsing beat outwards, through Pansy’s fingers and underneath her skin; she imagines she can imprint on Pansy whatever she’d like to be written there. Her name? Perhaps, but somehow she doesn’t think so.

Except for the music, the room has gone quiet around them. She feels them watching, feels their eyes on where she and Pansy are touching. Boy’s eyes, round and bright and greedy, and probably ready to give anything right now to slip a hand in between her dress and Pansy’s trousers. She sees Pansy’s eyes briefly glide past her and knows that she is thinking the same. She closes her eyes, lets her hips sway slowly and sensuously, then shimmies down the length of Pansy’s body, never losing touch. She senses rather than hears the intakes of breath around the room, the deepening undercurrent of wanting.

Pansy’s hands are on her head, gliding through her hair, over her shoulders, down her bare arms as she moves back up, until they are eye to eye again. One of her hands twines her fingers around Ginny’s, the other comes to rest firmly against the small of her back, drawing her even closer… so very close now, Ginny can see a mole peeking out from under her bra strap, can smell her perfume, a heavy, slightly unpleasant fragrance, like orchids, like something rotting beneath something sweet. She finds this oddly fitting.

Pansy, it appears, is not someone who steps back once she’s stepped forward. Her hand around Ginny’s is firm and dry, her eyes steady and black and more alert than Ginny expected.

“What are you playing at, Weasley?” she asks, in a soft, molten murmur that seems to go directly into Ginny’s bloodstream. She grins mischievously, slowly slides a knee in between Pansy’s legs, pretending that the dance demands it.

“Nothing you can win, Parkinson”, she replies, and Pansy’s thick eyebrows once again disappear into her glossy fringe, amused.

“Damn sure of yourself, aren’t you”, she says derisively. But her eyes are on Ginny’s lips now, her gaze just that tiny bit less steady. Ginny leans forward, puts her lips next to Pansy’s ear, which is half-hidden by thick black hair, and whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”

She can feel their eyes as they leave, can feel the air heavy with the buzzing of excitement and whisper, and couldn’t care less.

They walk slowly, not speaking, through the darkened hallways, Pansy trailing smoke. They don’t touch now. It is only when Ginny begins to climb stairways with a steady certainty that Pansy asks, “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” is all Ginny says, and when they reach the Room of Requirement, it is what she required. A small room, dark wood, candles. A mirror. The velvet throw on the bed is black and seems to suck in all light, like Pansy’s trousers when her legs shift. Ginny closes the heavy oaken door behind them and leans back against it, watching Pansy take the room in. She feels power thrumming through her veins.

The candlelight shimmers on Pansy’s neck as she cocks her head. She casually flicks her cigarette onto the bare stone floor and steps on it, stubbing it out with her heel, then turns. “I see”, she says. “Now what?”

Ginny gently pushes herself off from the door and kicks off her shoes, never taking her eyes off Pansy. She tosses her hair back, just a little, the way that Blaise said was sexy as hell, and slowly walks towards Pansy on bare feet.

Pansy laughs. “Oh come off it, Weasley. You don’t seriously think we’re going through with this?” But her eyes are on Ginny’s lips again, and her stance is more defensive than her bored air lets on. Ginny shrugs, and sees Pansy’s eyes dart to her shoulder when one of her dress straps slips down. “Come on, Parkinson”, she says. “Aren’t you curious?”

She sets a hand lightly on Pansy’s hip, feels the smooth softness of leather, and the warmth of flesh beneath.

“I mean”, she continues, hand slightly curving until it is digging into Pansy’s hip, until Pansy frowns in a slightly different, calculating way. “They all think we’re doing it anyway.” She takes another step closer, until she can smell Pansy, orchid-perfume and smoke and leather and sweat, and smiles. “They’re all going to be thinking of us tonight when they wank in their beds”, she murmurs. “Don’t you think we should at least enjoy it as much as them?”

Pansy wrinkles her nose. “You’re disgusting”, she says, but there is no denying the gleam of interest in her eyes, and Ginny has no doubts, none at all. She licks her lips, slowly and deliberately. Pansy suddenly turns away. “Fine”, she says abruptly. “Fine. But don’t expect me to go down on you or anything gross.” She pulls her shirt over her head.

The mirror is not above the bed – she isn’t _that_ tacky – but she can imagine she can see them on the bed, mingled in shades of red and black. Pansy’s hair is thick and glossy between her fingers, and her lips softer than imagined, but she kisses forcefully, all teeth and tongue and taste of smoke. She seems to want to be in control, and Ginny leaves her the illusion, her own lips open and pliant. Never having had a sister, she is not nearly so knowledgeable about the differences in female bodies as she is about men’s, and so she notes things with clinical interest: Pansy’s skin, which is rich and smooth and a different kind of pale from her own, more ivory than milk. Her fingers, longer and elegant and quite unlike her own stubby ones; softness and muscle where Ginny is all bones and sinew and a thin layer of skin that breaks so easily.

Pansy is a confusing mix of edges and curves, sharp shoulder blades and square features juxtaposed by the generous swell of hips and breasts, the curiously vulnerable curve of her stomach. Her breasts are heavy and warm against Ginny’s own, larger than hers, which could never move the way that Pansy’s do, swaying and moulding and brushing hotly against her. The movement excites her strangely – the way they sway slightly when Pansy shifts, the way they thrust outwards and seem to strain against her hands, with that puzzling mixture of softness and firmness, nipples taut and hard against her palms. They seem more sensitive than her own, too – Pansy bites down on her lip and hisses when Ginny lightly skims her hands over them, the barest touch, only just grazing the nipples.

Comparison makes room for more immediate concerns when she realises just how much she can control this, just how well she can play Pansy with just a tweak to her nipples, just a light stroke down her sides. Pansy feels solid and heavy against her, somehow more and less than she had imagined. Secretly she had hoped for recognition – a bond of sorts, a kind of _knowing_. The woman’s touch. Later, she will laugh at that kind of naïve assumption. Just because Pansy’s body is white and rounded against hers, just because there is no swollen cock pushing against her thighs, does not mean that this feels any more familiar, any less puzzling.

“Ow”, Pansy hisses as Ginny slips her fingers down and pushes, hard, as she likes it. Black eyes glare at her, candle flames dancing in them like angry sprites. “It’s a cunt, Weasley, not a fucking mosquito bite!”

Ginny is startled into laughter – neither her mother’s careful admonishments about always washing “down there” nor Blaise’s colourful description of “ew, looks like a fish cut open” have ever allowed for calling it something as blunt as a cunt. For a second, it makes her almost like this girl of curves and edges, makes her wish more strongly for that thread of recognition she can’t feel.

“Sorry”, she murmurs, and moves her hand more leisurely, gently splaying Pansy open, rubbing teasingly, testing reactions to various methods of touch. Black velvet shifts against them, and Ginny’s hair gets pinned underneath her as Pansy rolls on top, hips thrusting furtively against her. Pansy smells of orchids and smoke, her hair hides Ginny’s face as she begins to move against her rhythmically, and she is as much a stranger as Zach, as those boys who she only remembers as scars.

She sighs against Pansy’s neck in disappointment, fingers thrusting in slickness that feels as alien as any boy’s cock, and arches in surprise when Pansy’s teeth sink sharply into her neck. She moans before she can hold herself back, and Pansy lifts her head, one heavy brow cocked in amused contempt, even though sweat is gathering on her upper lip and her cheeks are flushed.

“Oh, is that what you’re into?” she asks and, without waiting for an answer, lifts a hand from where it was gently stroking Ginny’s stomach, and pinches one of her nipples, hard. Ginny arches up and hisses in sharp pleasure. “I see”, Pansy says, lazily squeezing her nipple, and suddenly her rich voice, filled with smugness and bored derision, fills Ginny with a white-hot fury. She lashes out before she can think, and Pansy’s head rocks back with the force of the blow. She stares down at Ginny with an unreadable expression, her pale cheek red with the imprint of Ginny’s hand.

“You bitch”, she says tonelessly.

Ginny laughs in her face. “Don’t you know any other swearwords, Parkinson?”

Pansy backhands her so quickly she can’t see it coming, can’t raise a hand or turn her face away. She feels her lip split, feels blood trickling richly into her mouth, and still she laughs. Pansy is shaking her, dark eyes flashing with anger.

“Stop that”, she hisses. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” and that makes Ginny laugh even harder, because isn’t that a new one. She laughs and laughs, ignores Pansy shaking her and proving that she does indeed know more than one swearword.

It is only when Pansy grabs her wrists and pins them down above her head, brutally pinching the tender skin there, that she stops laughing. She squirms. “Let go of me”, she gasps.

Pansy is still on top of her, straddling her waist, her face, pale and furious, just inches from Ginny’s own. “You. Don’t. Laugh. At me”, she says, very coldly and precisely. Ginny feels a thrill of excitement at the cold trickle of that voice, and that’s when she realises that Pansy is pinning her wrists with one hand, and the other is still on her breast. She sees the exact moment when Pansy notices this as well in the slight widening of her eyes, followed by the immediate drawing together of her brows. They are both breathing hard, Ginny from laughing and Pansy from fury. Pansy’s hand moves, slow but hard, squeezing hard, and then harder. Ginny makes a noise.

Pansy doesn’t smile, not anymore. Her face is square and intense and unlovely and she is watching for Ginny’s reactions like a Dementor watching for an opportunity to kiss. Slowly, her hand keeps moving, roaming, pinching. Delivering pain in small, calculated measures that sizzle along Ginny’s nerves like tiny flickers of lightning. She moans, tugs at her wrists experimentally, but Pansy’s grip is strong and unrelenting. She leans down unhurriedly and sinks her teeth into Ginny’s neck again, just this side of breaking skin, and Ginny shudders, hips lifting involuntarily. Pansy’s hand moves down then, and it is no longer slow. She bites at Ginny’s neck and breasts while she fucks her, hard and without finesse, fingers slamming down on her and into her, and Ginny knows she’ll be all out in bruises and bite marks tomorrow and she doesn’t care, she is writhing in Pansy’s iron grip, bucking underneath her unrelenting weight and she wants wants wants, and then she gets it, in a final, straining convulsion that wrings a strange animal noise from her, half pleading and half curse.

It takes a while for the world to come back to her, the room with its flickering candles, the roaring blood in her ears and the taste of blood in her mouth.

And Pansy Parkinson, watching her cautiously, as if she expected her to attack again. The bruise on her cheek is coming along nicely. Ginny doesn’t speak. She reaches out to brush her fingers across Pansy’s breasts, and Pansy, though she continues to watch her, does not protest when she runs her hands over them, leans down to suckle on the nipples, kisses her way down Pansy’s white stomach and sets to figuring out how going down on a girl differs from doing it to a boy.

Very, she finds out, in the technique, but not all that much in the outcome. After a few wordless touches of Pansy’s on her head, a few surprised intakes of breath, she gets the picture. It doesn’t take long. Pansy comes silently, the sudden releasing of the straining muscles of her thighs and stomach the only indication of her pleasure. Ginny actually keeps going for a few moments, unsure of having succeeded, until she feels Pansy’s hand on her hair, stilling her. She looks up, lips slightly numb, and sees only Pansy’s long neck, arched back so far that the angle hides her face. Ginny sits up and wipes her face on a corner of the sheet. She can feel the familiar dull ache in her breasts, and a less familiar ache further down. It is something of a shock to realise that this is the first time she has come when she planned not to.

When she looks up, she finds Pansy watching her, face flushed, sleek hair in disarray. “You’re really messed up, Weasley,” Pansy says, with a surprised tone of respect in her voice, and Ginny has to laugh.

“It’s not my fault”, she says. “I had a difficult childhood. I was seduced by a diary.”

She gets up from the bed, walks to the floor-length mirror with the intricate silver frame, and surveys herself. Her hair and her lipstick, clashing shades of red, frame a face too white, with every freckle standing out starkly. Her lips are swollen, as are her nipples. Her too-dark eyes stare back at her in mild revulsion, asking with little interest, _So was that any better, then_? She honestly doesn’t know.

Pansy watches her in silence as she reaches for her dress, struggles with her high heels, pushes her sweaty hair off her face. “Let’s do that again sometime”, she says then, and Ginny fights a renewed urge to laugh.

“Sure”, she says instead, giving up on the heels and just picking them up. “Let’s.”

On her way back to Gryffindor Tower, she hears soft noises from a side corridor and stops for a moment, peeking around a corner. In a window alcove, framed against the pale spring sky, two boys are silhouetted sharply, the moon painting their hair and skin in shades of black and silver. They are kissing without hurry, hands wandering slowly, exploring, inviting. They are beautiful. For several long moments, Ginny watches them as her bare feet grow cold on the stone floor, wondering what it must feel like, being in love.

The two months left of the school year are spent with O.W.L. preparations (a little) and fucking Pansy (a lot). They don’t go back to the Room of Requirement after that first time. It is as if they have an unspoken arrangement not to. They meet in Hogsmeade, or in the dilapidated boathouse a mile or so around the lake, or in deserted classrooms. It’s all straightforward enough. Pansy knows what Ginny likes, and has no problem delivering it.

After that first time, she does not grin, or make derogatory comments. She makes Ginny want to come, and then she makes her come. It is that easy. Ginny also quickly learns what Pansy likes, how the concept of Pansy works. She likes Ginny going down on her, and she likes having her breasts nibbled at, but not bitten. She likes watching Ginny as she does herself. She likes watching in general. She likes dirty talk and she likes to hold Ginny down. She also seems to like playing with Ginny’s hair and touching her freckles.

Among the more inconsequential things she likes are gin, hay, Northern lights, Scandinavian countries, smoking, History of Magic, Muggle films, birds, Draco Malfoy, and all things chocolate. Things Pansy doesn’t seem to like include sports, the heat, snakes, and most things school-related.

All things considered, Pansy is very easy to figure out, and sometimes Ginny feels something like disappointment uncoil and writhe gently within. She thought it would be daring, seducing Pansy Parkinson. She thought it would be scandalous. The school is whispering and pointing, yes, but so what? She doesn’t really care and neither, she suspects, does Pansy; thus, the allure of scandal is lost. She thought Pansy would be a challenge, and in many ways she is – she can read Ginny better than most other people, she’s dark and compelling and yes, attractive in a strangely unattractive way, but at the same time, Ginny knows that Pansy is also just another innocent hidden underneath an impenetrable gaze and a lot of make-up and a tough act, just another scar waiting to be cut.

This is Pansy: After the first time, she’s reluctant to get fully naked, usually keeping on most of her clothes and just pulling and pushing them out of the way where necessary. She doesn’t like her body, she says defiantly when Ginny asks, and yet she doesn’t want to be seen as pretty. She carefully conceals what harsh appeal there may be in her square features with a perpetual scowl, a lazy frown of derision which, Ginny suspects, she has copied from Malfoy through long years of careful observation. She wants to be tough, she wants to be a bitch, she wants to be dark. Ginny, who knows about darkness, smiles at the transparency of that wish, Pansy’s naivety. Pansy isn’t the dark temptress she fancies herself, but she has potential. Ginny knows this. She’s fifteen years old and knows about the inherent human affinity to fall. She knows that everyone can be corrupted, even those who believe themselves corrupt already. Only purity has limitations; taint is infinite.

Except for her rough-voiced spurts of obscenity in bed, Pansy doesn’t like to talk, not about things that matter, anyway. Not about her parents, who, as far as Ginny knows, are obscenely rich and abroad a lot (probably on business for Voldemort, Ginny thinks with hidden excitement.) Not about the news in the Daily Prophet, tales of disappearances and explosions and Dark Marks every day, and what she thinks will happen in the days to come. Not about Malfoy, whom she still sees regularly, and whose mention is still the only thing that brings softness to her face, where it flounders in confusion, trying to fit itself around her sharp edges (Ginny wonders if Pansy knows this, knows the weakness it contains, ripe for exploiting).

Certainly not about Malfoy and Harry, who take extreme care not to be seen together – the one time Ginny brings it up, Pansy shoots her a nasty glare and storms from the room without another word.

No, Pansy doesn’t talk much, but that is fine with Ginny. Like Zach in his time, Pansy, for now, suits Ginny’s needs.

O.W.L.s pass without much ado; no one cares much about school achievements these days, Every day rumours of deaths trickle in, and they all know that O.W.L.s are the least of their worries. Harry’s face is set in perpetual grim lines and Ginny doesn’t envy him the glances that everyone throws his way, furtive or calculating or pleading, all asking him to save them or assessing his ability to do so. She wonders whether he talks to Malfoy about how he feels, if there is room for that with them. She knows she and Pansy don’t.

Ron doesn’t know what’s up with her and Pansy, for once miraculously deaf to the whispers about them. He probably lacks the imagination to consider the possibility, which is just as well, because if he knew, he probably would hit her. It’s less than two weeks until school is over, and Ginny sees the long weeks of summer at The Burrow looming ahead with an odd mix of dreadful apprehension and wistfulness, because it might well be the last summer for any of them. But then, one afternoon in the boathouse, when they are done and Ginny is watching the slow progress of a fly scrabbling across the sweat-sheened skin of her stomach,

Pansy, who is already hurriedly pulling her trousers up, asks her in an off-hand tone of voice whether she wants to come to Finland. Her parents have a summer home there, but they won’t be there, they’re away somewhere in Central Europe, so the place is all Pansy’s for as long as she wants. Does Ginny want to come? Like there’s a question about it. The blood is roaring in her ears so loudly that she can barely speak, she is so excited. “Yes”, she manages. “Yes.”

Pansy’s lips curve a little. “Okay”, she says, and that is all.

Her parents don’t even give her trouble. Molly insists on owling Pansy’s parents to make sure everything is all right, but that’s a small annoyance in the face of the prospect of a summer for herself. She thinks that secretly her mother is relieved that she’s passed out of her scandalous phase and is doing things with a girl her age. The thought makes Ginny giggle as if she were twelve.

Then, a week before school’s out, Pansy, when doing her little walkabout across Ginny’s freckles with her fingers, comes across the scars on her arm, seven of them, neat parallel white lines. She’s seen the one on her stomach before, which Ginny explained away with glass shards when she was little, but there can be little mistake as to what these are. Pansy grabs her arm, hard, and stares at the pale lines. Her voice is odd when she asks what they are.

Ginny shrugs. “Scars”, she says. “Knives. Blood. You never felt the attraction?” She smiles at Pansy’s white face, the sharp line between her brows. “What, you have a problem with blood, Parkinson?”

Pansy’s grip around her arm tightens, so much that Ginny knows she’ll have a bruise tomorrow. Then her arm is flung aside with sudden vehemence, her fingers connecting painfully with the wall above the old gym mat they are lying on.

“Ow!” she says, glaring at Pansy. “What was that about?”

Pansy is staring at her with something very close to revulsion. “You’re sick”, she spits. “What kind of fucked-up slag are you?”

Ginny makes a tsking noise. “Language”, she says. She almost pities Pansy, who despite all her Slytherin airs is so sheltered, so innocent. “Don’t worry about it”, she says, pulling on her shirt. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have a clue”.

Pansy’s face is very white, and so tight with an inner fury that it looks like it might burst outwards any second, splintering bones and blood and skin everywhere. “No”, she says, in that same, tightly controlled voice. “I think it’s you who doesn’t have a clue, you stupid, stupid little girl”.

She slams the door on her way out, leaving Ginny with faint annoyance at being called a stupid little girl and a deeper concern that Finland might be off, that it’s The Burrow after all. But two days later, she receives a note per owl, telling her in Pansy’s untidy scrawl to meet her at the Hog’s Head at 2 pm on the last day of school. They’ll go by Floo.

She’s not the only one who has plans for the summer. Hermione is coming to The Burrow, to Ron’s gag-inspiring delight. Harry tells her in a rare quiet moment that he is going to Rome with Malfoy. “Nobody knows but Hermione and you”, he says, looking sheepish, “so don’t tell anyone, ok? Ron would flip.” He grimaces. “As would Draco’s mum.”

Ginny smiles. No, she won’t tell anyone. She has her own secrets to keep. She wonders briefly how Harry can just leave, whether he wouldn’t want to prepare himself for whatever is to come. A final strike must come soon, and there are prophecies to fulfill. But then she realises that the answer is in the question. Destiny has a habit of not waiting; whenever Voldemort strikes, Harry will be ready, or as ready as he’s been since he knew who he was.

These are the days of sunset, the last days of the round table; after this, they will all scatter and die, or roam on endless quests destined for disillusionment. They might as well live these last days as fiercely as they can. She hopes the sun sets beautifully in Rome, and that Malfoy is worth it. Harry deserves that much.

Finland is lovely. The house – pine, airy and bright, not at all what Ginny would have imagined a Death Eater abode to be like – lies between two lakes, neither of which, for a refreshing change, is inhabited either by giant squids or merpeople.

They go swimming a lot – or rather, Ginny goes swimming while Pansy sits on shore, in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt despite the heat, reading a book. There is a small town where they buy groceries, which for Ginny, child of all-magical upbringing and food conveniently Accio’d from the local house elf supply store, is an all-new experience. Pansy also rents movies for them which, back at the house, she pushes into a weird black box called a veeciar. Ginny likes the movies. They’re almost like magic, little people living their lives in a box with a screen, and everything stopping at the most convenient moment. She makes a mental note to get her dad one of the veeciar machines for his next birthday, although she is under no illusion that it would survive the zeal of Arthur Weasley’s “examinations” for more than a day.

There’s also a club in the small town, and they go dancing a few times. Ginny enjoys the Muggle music and not understanding the language. It sets her and Pansy apart in a way that she finds quite fitting, underlining how they aren’t part of the rest of the gyrating crowd. Her mother sends regular owls, which Ginny very irregularly replies to. There are no owls from Pansy’s parents.

In between going out, swimming and watching movies, they fuck. Pansy seems to enjoy working her way through every room of her parents’ house, and Ginny is happy to comply. There are no pictures in the house, not of her parents, not of dead pets, not of little Pansy in pigtails. She doesn’t ask about Pansy about this or about the lack of owls, and Pansy asks no more about her scars. They get along well enough. Sometimes, lying on the couch in the living room late at night, watching a movie, with Pansy’s hand in Ginny’s hair or idly caressing her thigh, she thinks it’s almost like having a girlfriend. It’s a weird thought, but Ginny decides not to freak out about it. Sometimes she feels like it’s all a script and the moment where the little names start rolling on the black screen in the Muggle films is coming up, with her having no say at which point they will stop. Oh for the convenience of an orderly ending.

It’s mid-August and almost time to go back, a moment Ginny also chooses not to think about. She wonders whether Malfoy has broken Harry’s heart yet, whether Ron has got into Hermione’s knickers (she quickly bids that disturbing image goodbye), whether her mother will seem less of a sad figure when she sees her again. When she lets herself, she wonders how much time they have left, and whether any of them will be alive this time next year.

One day Ginny comes back from a long swim, her hair only just drying, and finds she has left her towel at the lake, and Pansy’s is lying on the bathroom floor in a wet heap. She scrounges around for a bit, then, when she can’t find any fresh towels, goes to ask Pansy.

The door is ajar, so she doesn’t knock. It only comes to her later that she was barefoot and that’s probably why Pansy couldn’t hear her. The door swings open soundlessly, and there is Pansy, on her bed, her back to Ginny, clad only in a black string and a dark green lacy bra. She’s bent over something, her black hair falling forwards into her face, and Ginny is just about to ask whether she needs help jerking off in a mocking tone when she hears Pansy make a sound – a small moan, not quite unlike the ones she sometimes makes when she’s seconds away from coming, but there is an undertone, a cadence to it that instantly tells Ginny that it’s not a sound of passion. Every muscle in Pansy’s back is tense, and there’s something odd about the way she holds herself, as though she were cradling something precious. Ginny silently comes closer on bare feet, until she can peek over Pansy’s shoulder.

The snake is small, maybe twice finger length, and half an inch in diameter. Its scales are bluish and slightly iridescent, with a faint diamond-shaped pattern down the back of it. Its eyes are slitted and pale, its tongue a dainty flicker of red at the tip of the triangular head. It is beautiful. Ginny holds her breath watching it undulate and writhe elegantly on Pansy’s stomach, tongue flickering searchingly. It takes her several long moments to notice that something is wrong with the snake’s proportions, something is not quite as it should be.

When she realises what it is, it still doesn’t sink in immediately. The snake is flat, it does not protrude from Pansy’s pale skin. For all its lively motions, there is no depth to its image. She leans even further, frowning, and that’s when snake and girl both notice her, the snake a second before Pansy. Its elegant head whips around, its pale eyes fix on Ginny, then quickly wriggles away to disappear around Pansy’s hip.

That’s when Pansy grabs the coverlet and quickly pulls it around herself, glaring at Ginny as fiercely as she can manage, but she looks deeply shaken underneath it. “Have you ever heard of knocking, Weasley?” she hisses.

Ginny shrugs. “Wasn’t aware I was supposed to, all things considered”, she says, then points at Pansy’s stomach. “What’s that?”

If possible, Pansy goes even whiter. “Nothing”, she says vehemently.

Ginny laughs. “Come off it, Parkinson. I’ve seen it.”

Pansy simply continues to glare at her, and Ginny gets a little confused, a little annoyed. “What’s the matter? I’ve already seen it. I think it’s pretty”, she adds, thinking that maybe Pansy’s ashamed.

But suddenly it’s Pansy who laughs, a harsh sound without humour. “You would”, she says. But she lets the coverlet slip off her shoulders and sits in her underwear, looking defiant. The snake is nestled once more against her stomach, curled around her bellybutton. It moves its head at the disturbance, tongue lazily questing. Its muscles ripple slightly, making the iridescent scales catch the sunlight. Ginny stares. She has heard of magical tattoos, but she has never seen one.

“Where did you get it?”

“My parents gave her to me for my tenth birthday”, Pansy says dispassionately. Her hand grabs Ginny’s when she reaches out for the creature’s head, holding it immobile. “Don’t touch her”, she says warningly.

Ginny rolls her eyes. “Fine. I won’t touch your precious body art. Why are you keeping it hidden, anyway? It’s lovely.”

Pansy doesn’t reply. The tattooed snake has lost interest in Ginny and has slithered over to the point where Pansy’s thigh meets her hip. The blue head wriggles into the fold of skin there. A second later, Pansy winces.

“What’s wrong?” Ginny asks, but she misses Pansy’s reaction, if there is any, because she has noticed something new. The snake tattoo is changing colour. Slowly, the delicate blue deepens to a rich shade of purple, swelling like a particularly tasty plum. Fascinated, Ginny leans closer, despite Pansy’s restraining hand. Pansy angles slightly away from her, and in doing so knocks something off her bedside table: a slender blade, edged in crimson. It lies on the cream carpet like an exclamation mark inked on pristine parchment.

Ginny stares from the knife to the tattooed snake, whose colour is still deepening. Its tail is undulating gently, its head still buried in the fold of Pansy’s skin. It takes another quiet sound of pain from Pansy for the penny to drop. She leans back suddenly, as though she feared the snake might leap. Pansy is watching her, wearing her unreadable expression.

Ginny looks from her to the snake to the red-smeared blade. “It drinks blood?”

There is a long pause; when Pansy speaks, it sounds reluctant. Ginny remembers that she doesn’t like to speak of things she considers private, even to someone who knows how she tastes when she comes. “It’s bound to its bearer”, she says. “It usually hangs around wherever it was last fed. That’s the only way I can keep it off my… off my face.”

The small pause does not escape Ginny, nor does the flicker of loathing in Pansy’s eyes. Her reluctance to undress suddenly has nothing to do with not liking her body.

The snake apparently has had enough. It retreats a little, head swaying a few times, then it coils itself up neatly and lies still near Pansy’s hipbone, a small knot of deep purple that almost looks like a bruise. Ginny stares at it, frowning. Trying to make sense. The knife still lies on the carpet, probably staining it beyond repair. She leans down and picks it up, tests the blade with an expert’s thumb. Very sharp.

“Why do you…” She hesitates. “I thought you hated knives.”

Pansy says nothing. She stretches her leg experimentally. A hairline of red mars her skin, almost exactly in the crook of thigh and hip.

“What happens if you don’t feed it?”

Pansy shrugs. “She feeds herself. She’s got some sort of poison, so when she bites, there’s infections. And she goes wild. Moves wherever she wants to. I gave up trying to starve her long ago. The knife’s easier. Keeps her happy.”

“Her?”

“I named her Hecate.”

She would. A tribute to death, roaming your skin. Ten? Ginny shudders, against her will. Then she remembers what Pansy said earlier. “Wait… your _parents_ did this to you?”

Pansy’s nose wrinkles. “Don’t get dramatic, Weasley. It was a gift.” Her lips curl, whether in disgust or amusement, Ginny can’t tell. “She’s for self-discipline, they said.”

Ginny tries to imagine this, and fails. Then something else crosses her mind and she narrows her eyes, running them over the rare sight of Pansy’s bared skin, which is smooth and unblemished. “But if you’ve been doing this for six years… where…?”

Pansy laughs. It is a nasty sound, and coiled Hecate twitches in annoyance on her hip. “Not everyone’s an amateur like you.”

And she shows Ginny. The hairline cuts are expertly delivered, in the crooks of knees and elbows, hidden in skin folds, along her groin, behind her ears, between her fingers and toes, in her armpits, underneath her breasts, high on the backs of her thighs. She shows her the large area of pinkish tissue on the inside of her ankle, calmly explaining the one time when she tried to get rid of Hecate, resulting in nothing but a mess and a permanent scar. Most of the others, the feeding scars, are all but invisible. Only where the same place has been cut many times can you see anything, ghost scars laid upon each other, resurrected.

“How often?” she asks, fingers hovering near the inside of Pansy’s elbows, above the merest lint of faded scar.

“Twice or thrice a week.”

Pansy was right. She’s not an amateur. Ginny can feel her own scars like burns; they feel huge and clumsy and stupid. She imagines being ten years old and trying to find secret places to take a knife to yourself, not because you want to, because you have no other choice, and nobody to turn to. Self-discipline. Something twitches unpleasantly in her belly, as though she, too, had a snake, an impostor inside her flesh. As if in answer, Hecate twitches too. Ginny tries to imagine being afraid of being betrayed by your own skin, a telltale movement wriggling up your neck in Potions class, lovingly curling round your ear. Looking in a mirror to see your face a-crawl. She shudders slightly. Knives she can deal with, but she never did like snakes. Another of Tom Riddle’s legacies.

They sit in silence, watching sleeping Hecate. Ginny feels like she should say something, but there is nothing she can think of. What would she say? ‘My mum sucks too, she makes me do the dishes’? She watches Pansy, who looks as impenetrable as anyone can look in underwear that doesn’t match, and suddenly feels scared. She thought she had this figured out. She was a fool to think anyone was what they seemed, even Pansy bloody Parkinson. She was a fool to think no one but her knew about corruption.

Still not knowing what to say, she reaches out, because she feels she should. “Pansy-”

Her hand is slapped away so hard it stings. Pansy’s face is ugly in its cold remoteness; she looks about ready to bare her teeth. “Don’t make me puke, Weasley. Just leave it.”

“But-”

“I said leave it. I’ve no interest in your pity party.” She sneers, jerking her head towards the neat parallel lines on Ginny’s arm. “And for the love of god don’t think we’ve something in common now. I’m not a total sicko like you.”

For a second, Ginny is stunned. Then anger sweeps her up in a familiar wave, and she launches herself at Pansy with a silent snarl. Pansy topples, taken by surprise. They land on the cream carpet, punching and kicking. Ginny is spitting swearwords, calling Pansy a cunt, a stuck-up bitch, a stupid ice block Death Eater whore who got exactly what she deserves.

Pansy fights in silence, but with a vehemence that would have Ginny fearing for her bones if she were not so livid. She doesn’t know exactly why she’s so furious, but she doesn’t care. Anger’s a lot better than that awful hollow tugging feeling, and it’s a whole heck of a lot better than fear.

But she has never won a fight against Pansy, for all that most of them were foreplay. Pansy’s advantage in weight soon makes itself known; she’s rolled on top of Ginny, pinning her down, and is trying to hold her immobile. Cursing, demanding to be let go, Ginny throws her head around, trying to hit something important. Pansy lays an arm across her throat and pushes until Ginny has to choose between breathing or struggling. She forces herself to lie still, gulping in air in shallow breaths. Pansy’s face is inches from her own, and when Ginny can finally focus enough to see it, the shock hits her like a physical blow.

Pansy is crying, silently and furiously, her face white and her eyes burning with anger. She is crying stone tears, looking like a person who never learned to cry, like it’s physically hurting her. Ginny stares up at her, still struggling for breath. Pansy’s skin is warm and sweaty against her, and normally this would lead to Pansy sliding her hand down between Ginny’s legs, lowering her head to bite her breasts. But Ginny has never felt less aroused. Pansy is breathing harshly, but otherwise not making a sound. Just those tears streaming down her face, her jaw clenched so tight her face looks well and truly square, and less attractive than ever.

Ginny feels hollowed out, like someone has taken a knife to her insides and carved her out neatly, until there’s nothing left but a shell of skin. Pansy’s crying makes her want to squirm and shout, to hit and make her hit back or to fuck her until she stops. It makes her feel as though she had to do something radical, something equally outrageous to the concept of Pansy Parkinson crying.

Pansy’s arm has lifted off her windpipe. Before she knows what she’s doing, Ginny raises her head, neck muscles straining, and presses her lips against Pansy’s. She tastes salt and blood and realises, without surprise, that she’s bitten her lip during their tussle. She would have expected Pansy to slap her down, but Pansy is holding still, even her lips barely moving. They don’t use tongues. Ginny feels more vulnerable than she has in a long time, and a part of her hates it. But Pansy’s hand is against the back of her head, taking off the strain, and that feels good. That’s all she can focus on, the warmth of Pansy’s hand against her skull, and Pansy’s lips so still underneath hers.

They lie there for what seems an hour. Eventually, Pansy lifts up, slowly rolls off Ginny. Half-sitting, she sighs, looking down at her stomach. Following her gaze, Ginny sees Hecate. The snake is clearly done napping. It wriggles across Pansy’s skin in agitated circles, head raised, hissing soundlessly, disappearing round the back only to reappear seconds later, moving so fast she’s like a blur. Several times, she returns to the fold of skin where she fed earlier.

“What is it?” Ginny asks, although she thinks she already knows. Pansy makes a face. “She didn’t get enough.”

She rolls around, gropes for the knife, which has been kicked underneath the bed in the frenzy of their fight. When she emerges with it, her face is grim. She lifts one breast, revealing old scars there. Her cheeks are still wet, but her eyes are dry now, her motions precise and without hesitation. Ginny watches her lift the knife, watches the uncompromising line of her mouth, the long arch of her neck and the way the dying sun catches a lingering glint of tear, and fights an insane urge to laugh.

Fucking Pansy Parkinson.

“Give me that”, she says, snatching the knife from Pansy’s untrembling hand before the blade can break skin. She slashes across her arm uncaringly, watching the familiar way the skin opens in the blade’s wake like ocean foam behind a ship. Pansy makes a strange noise when the blood begins to flow, but Ginny isn’t looking at her. She lowers her arm to Pansy’s stomach, presses it against her skin. “Come here, you little bitch.”

Hecate doesn’t need to be told. She comes hurrying towards the smell of blood. Ginny wasn’t sure if this would work, whether any blood but Pansy’s will do, but Hecate doesn’t seem to discriminate. There is a small pinprick of pain as the tattoo latches onto her arm, then a faint sensation of suction. Half-fascinated, half disgusted, Ginny watches the creature’s colour change as she absorbs her blood. For a moment, the fury comes back, but this time it’s not directed at Pansy but at this overgrown worm who dares to mar Pansy’s skin; at the amount of fucked-up-ness it would take for a parent to think it was a good present for your child. They sit in silence, bound by blood.

When Hecate finally stops, she is dark purple, scales glowing healthily. She does a little circling turn, like a cat chasing its tail, then flits down Pansy’s leg to curl around her ankle. Ginny no longer finds her beautiful. She wonders again what it must feel like to be afraid of your own skin.

“Ginny.”

She startles. Pansy reaches out and takes her arm, turning it so she can inspect the cut, which is still bleeding in a slow trickle. She’s cut deeper than she usually does. If she’s unlucky enough, this one will be quite noticeable. Pansy’s hand around her wrist feels strange. She’s not sure whether she should be shaking it off.

“It’s okay”, she says quickly, seeing Pansy frowning at the cut and hoping to forestall her and whatever strangeness is implied in the sound of that one word in Pansy’s rich, molten voice, Ginny. “I’ll put a bandage on it or something.”

“Shut up”, Pansy says. “I’m concentrating.” She grabs her wand from the bedside table and murmurs a spell. The cut closes, skin knitting itself back together, then turns into a thin pink line.

Ginny lifts her brows, impressed despite herself. “Handy.”

Pansy pulls a face. “One gets that way.” She lowers Ginny’s arm, but doesn’t let go; her hand slides down over her wrist until she is holding Ginny’s hand loosely in her own. It feels awkward, but it feels okay.

Pansy looks at her, still frowning. Ginny can’t read her expression; Pansy is so good at keeping her faces blank. For a long moment, there is silence. Outside, the sun is setting, sending streaks of red fire into the room and across Pansy’s pale skin.

“You’re messed up, Weasley”, she finally says, but something’s strange about her voice, and it takes Ginny a moment to figure it out. It lacks much of her usual venom.

Ginny sighs, and feels tension flow out of her with it, like a breath she’s been holding so long she no longer noticed the lack of air.

“Yeah well”, she says. “Join the club.”

 


End file.
